The narrative framework of the Arabian Nights in John Barth's The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor : a critical study

الملخص EN

The framework-story technique is a very old way of narration.

Stories are embedded within stories in extended parallel lines.

John Barth (b.

1930) takes up this technique in his novel, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991) in a creative way although he mainly depends on The Arabian Nights as a model.

The aim of this study is to show the significance of using this technique and the way Barth uses it in the selected novel to accord with the postmodernist fiction.

The narrator moves forward from the past to the present and from the East to the West in a labyrinth of frames and embedded stories.